France enters second round of elections
The decisive second round of elections in France has begun. Is there going to be a political earthquake and a government of the Right-Nationalists? At the end, there could hardly be a winner, but many losers.
The much-anticipated parliamentary elections in France have entered the decisive round. The polling stations opened at 8 am in the morning. The French are voting on the majority relations in the National Assembly. Above all, the question is: Has President Emmanuel Macron paved the way for the Right-Nationalists (RN) with his surprising new election?
The latest polls do not show an absolute majority for the RN, which is currently in the lead. The Right-Nationalists and their allies are expected to come in with 205 to 240 seats. They would thus be the strongest force in the National Assembly for the first time, but they would clearly miss the absolute majority of 289 seats.
The left-wing alliance formed for the early parliamentary elections is in second place. The centrist camp of President Emmanuel Macron is expected to have to reckon with a humiliating defeat according to the polls, it comes in third place in the polls.
Macron under Pressure
Therefore, no government-forming majority is apparent at the moment. It is expected that the existing government of Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne will continue to function in a caretaker capacity for some days until clarity about the formation of a future government emerges. This could take some time - the situation is as complicated as it has not been for a long time.
If the RN achieves an absolute majority, Macron would be under political pressure to appoint a premier from the ranks of the Right-Nationalists - for example, RN leader Jordan Bardella. This would be a turning point in the country's history and would have significant implications for European politics.
This would mean that France would have its first cohabitation since 1997. This means that the President and the Prime Minister represent different political directions.
Conservatives could be kingmakers
With a strong relative majority for the RN, it is calculated that this will try to attract further deputies from the bourgeois-conservative Republicans (LR) to its side in order to gain decision-making power in the Parliament.
The former ruling party had split in the run-up to the election. Its chairman Éric Ciotti had announced an independent cooperation with the RN, but only a small number of deputies followed him. The question now is how the other deputies will behave, who in the first round of voting had united around ten percent of the voter support.
Threat of a Standstill
It is currently unclear how effectively the alliance against the RN will function in practice. Since the parliamentary seats are allocated according to the majority vote, many candidates from the other parties have withdrawn in more than 200 constituencies where they came in third place in the first round. This increases the chance that the remaining candidate from a bourgeois party will defeat the RN candidate. Such a protective shield against the extreme right has been practiced in France before. Whether it will lead to a viable government is open.
The other camps - including the revitalized Socialists - have already made it clear that they do not want to govern together in a national coalition. The current government could then continue in office as a caretaker government or an expert government could be appointed.
The Macron alliance could stand before a pile of rubble in the power game of the president with the advanced parliamentary election and only be represented in Parliament in significantly reduced numbers. A new project could not be brought forward by a government without a majority. France is thus threatened with political standstill.
Macron dissolved the National Assembly after the victory of Le Pen's Rassemblement National in the European election at the beginning of June and announced new elections. The National Assembly is one of the two French parliamentary chambers. It is involved in legislation and can bring down the government through a vote of no confidence.
In the first round of voting, the Right-wing Nationalists were now leading, followed by the new Left alliance and Macron's Center-Left in third place. 76 of the 577 deputy seats had already been allocated, most of them to the RN (39) or the Left alliance (32) - the decision in the remaining constituencies now falls in the runoff election.
In the emotional aftermath of the elections, President Emmanuel Macron finds himself under immense political pressure, potentially leading to the appointment of RN leader Jordan Bardella as prime minister, marking a significant shift in France's political landscape and influencing European politics significantly.
If the Right-Nationalists manage to secure an absolute majority, as suggested by the latest polls, they may attempt to garner support from conservative Republicans (LR) to bolster their decision-making power within the National Assembly, potentially leading to a political standstill if negotiations fail.
